Turmoil
by DeviantWriter2015
Summary: This couldn't be happening! She was pregnant. There were two paths she could take. The first path was Ridicule. The second path was Guilt. Which one would she pick? Based on Nine Months by BlueJay and PurpleTina. One-shot


Turmoil

AN: One shot. Based on Nine Months. Figured the story needed _some_ kind of ending, you know?

[1] June 2, 2012

4:39 pm

_Ding!_

The timer just went off.

When she picked up the test, she was already in tears. Maybe on the inside, she had already known what the answer would be. When was the last time she'd gotten sick like this? As in _really_ fucking sick? She had the flu once. Age 8. Plenty of puking back then. Food poisoning from the cafeteria. Age 15. Puking then as well. It had pissed Mama off like almost nothing she had ever seen before. Now she made her own sack lunches every weekday.

Other than that? Not a damn thing, other than getting a single cold once every year.

She was fit enough for karate classes. She was fit enough to play football with the boys at school. She even had a barely-formed six-pack going on. How many 17-year-old women in her school could say that?

And yet here she was, sitting in the stall of a public bathroom, about to see what was to become of her life.

Her hands were shaking so bad, she needed both hands just to read the test results.

A pink positive sign.

She stared at it for a very long time. The test slipped out of her sweating hands. Her stomach dropped into her groin. Air entered and left her lungs in small gasps. The world made no sound. She couldn't hear anything except the rapid beating of her heart, the high-pitched whine of her brain.

The test made a brisk _clicking _sound when it hit the floor. It wasn't a loud sound, but it was a HUGE sound. It didn't echo back and forth through the bathroom and it didn't carry. It was a singular sound. A _final _sound. It marked the end of her old life, and the beginning of a new one. A terrible one.

"I'm pregnant." Penny Proud said.

She covered her mouth with her hands and began to scream.

[2]

11:33 pm

Night time now and Penny was in bed. Her eyes were puffy and bloodshot. Snot ran down her nose. She felt like dying.

She had barely been able to keep up the ruse during dinner. She wasn't very talkative when eating, but dead silence wasn't really her thing either…and that's exactly what she'd been giving to everyone today. Mama had picked up on it almost immediately.

_What's wrong, Penny?_

_Nothing Mama, just some of the class work is hard._

_Maybe we should get you a tutor._

_A tutor, do you know how much that costs?_

_Shut up, Oscar._

_Oscar will spend 40 dollars on ties that he ain't gonna put on, but can't fork over 20 bucks for a tutor. _

_Suga Mama, I'd pay you 100 bucks to get out of my house._

_I don't need a tutor, Mama. I'll just study a bit harder._

Yeah, study a bit harder. That was precious. That was cute. That was something you could roll up real tight and shove up your ass.

Study a bit harder. Because that's what smart people do. Plenty of people said she was smart. She did an amazing job proving that three weeks ago. LaCienega's boyfriend gave her a few compliments. The next thing you know, both of them are naked, and he's busting his nut inside her.

The man was wearing a condom, that's what was so damn unfair about it. Neither one of them heard or felt it tear when they were doing it. After the act, Penny had just _felt _it inside of her. Not a large amount. Not much more than a trickle. But that trickle had been enough.

She thought of the eventuality of telling her parents and the thought nearly made her sick again. Mama was always more understanding than Daddy, but even she had her limits. They had "The Talk" four years ago. How pointless it seemed back then. Mama had told Penny to talk to her if Penny ever "Got to a point where she absolutely cannot wait." Penny hadn't listened to that either.

The worse part was that Mama probably wouldn't just be angry. She would be disappointed, _genuinely_ hurt that nothing she had said had been listened to.

Her Daddy though…

Oscar Proud was going to let her have it.

_I told you not to go to that party with those damn boys!_

_What were you thinking? Were you even_ thinking_ at all? _

_Opening your legs for some smooth-talking Negro like this is some Tyler Perry movie._

_How could you be so STUPID?!_

Her heart ached.

School was going to be amazing too. Because it was A-OK for teenage boys to fool around, but God help you if you were a girl. People would call her a slut, a whore, a skank and many more names she didn't want to think about. People would say Penny Proud opens her legs up to muscle-bound players she didn't even know—and wasn't there an element of truth to that?

And then she would start to show.

Her gut would swell up like a beach ball. People would stare and snicker.

_That's what happens when you don't wrap it up. That's what happens when you let some smooth-talking Negro put the moves on you._

She remembered that talk with the pregnant girl in that public park. She remember DiJonay judging her like she knew what the girl's life was all about.

Zoey and Di would never look at her the same. She had to tell somebody what was going on soon. Zoey probably. She had known DiJonay for longer, of course, and what she _did _know about Di made the choice even easier. Penny loved Di, but she couldn't keep her mouth shut if it meant the firing squad.

And of course there was the big, loud, abrasive, Latina elephant in the room.

LaCienega.

All this was from banging her boyfriend.

Penny supposed she should have felt worse about it, like a shitty friend…but she didn't. She and La had been pretty good friends in middle school, she thought. La was always kind of a bitch, mouthy and insensitive, always bagging on the clothes Penny and DiJonay wore. She even made Zoey cry one time by bagging on her braces.

Come winter, their subdivision became a warzone, as LaCienega waged a one-girl on everybody else. Snowballs flew around like confetti, and Penny was her favorite target.

_Stop hitting my butt, you skank!_

_I wasn't trying to! Your ass is just that _fat_!_

_How 'bout a fat lip?!_

But LaCienega could be a sweet friend too.

Every single Christmas since they had met, Penny had gotten a present from her. Usually a book, sometimes poetry, sometimes Stephen King. She gave Zoey MyLittlePonies for her ridiculous collection. LaCienega made fun of Zoey for it once and then never again. She even went above and beyond, finding rare shit that nobody—not even Zoey—ever heard of.

_ A Game of Thrones, Jon Snow Armored, Twilight Sparkle? I don't even have the words for that. Where the hell did you find that, La? _

_ Where there's a will, there's a way, Proud._

DiJonay only ever got cards from La, sometimes not even that.

_I never get nothin' from that bitch._

_Stop dyeing your hair blonde and maybe you will._

And she couldn't forget summer camp over in Camp Sherwood. That had been when they were 12. La was supposed to go with one of her cousins but they flaked out, so she asked Penny to go with her. They were assigned the same bunk. La was constantly crunching on chips after bedtime, keeping everyone up. And every time Penny complained about it, the chica would just reach down and dump the empty bag on Penny's bed. It made Penny yell and LaCienega giggle.

Camp Sherwood had been bad, but Penny didn't know why. Something felt _off_ about it the whole time she'd been there. And what about the time she woke up to find LaCienega clutching her head like something was trying to get out?

_What's wrong with you? _

_My head's killing me. Why are we the only ones here? Where the fuck is everybody?_

_Jesus Christ. Chill, girl. They probably out getting high._

_I dunno. I think—where you going?_

_Gotta take a leak._

_Don't go outside._

_What are you talking—_

_DO NOT GO OUTSIDE!_

And the next day all the other kids were walking around like zombies, sore and puffy-eyed. Not a single one of them could remember anything from the night before. Penny didn't think it was from weed.

Yeah, Camp Sherwood had been terrible. But she couldn't remember much else about it, and maybe that was a good thing.

So weirdness aside, the friendship had been there.

Then they hit the 9th grade, and it was like the girl had just lost her damn mind. LaCienega always hung out with the popular kids a lot, but then she was doing it all the time. After that, the bitch never really hung out with Penny or her friends, and the only time they ever saw her was at parties, where she did nothing but bag on them.

DiJonay, because the girl kept on dyeing her hair blonde. Some black women could pull off the clearly artificial look but Di wasn't one of them.

Zoey because she _still _had orthodontic stuff on, except now she had rubber bands too.

And Penny herself…

_Where did you get those clothes, Proud? I know the Salvation Army gives clothes away, but you ain't supposed to take ALL of them._

_Jesus Christ, Proud, that zit on your forehead looks like the Goodyear Blimp._

_Proud, I can smell you from all the way over here. You've heard of this new invention, right? It's called "soap."_

_Proud, stop shaking your head. There's so much dandruff in the air that I can't breathe. _

She'd been treating them all like shit. They had done nothing to deserve it, and the change had happened so _suddenly_.

"That's no excuse." Penny said finally.

No it wasn't. None of it was. Penny slept with Bishop, partly out of the fact that he was a cutie, but mostly out of spite for La. That kind of thinking was shitty, and she'd known it even then. Doing the deed with the man didn't make her any better. It made her worse. But the spite remained. Penny's "Salvation Army" clothes. Her "plain" face with the occasional zit. Her "bad" breath when she did nothing but chew peppermint gum all day. Her "shitty" Jeep Compass. At the end of the day, Bishop had wanted to sleep with her anyways. And deep down, in some dark, sick part of her mind…that _still _felt good.

Even if nothing else did.

[3]

1:23 am

She tossed and turned in the bed.

Penny knew damn well that she wasn't going to sleep anytime soon. Her mind was racing too fast. This had happened to her once before. In the 9th grade, about a week before LaCienega went off the deep-end, Penny actually got a boyfriend. Lamar was his name.

Lamar was, what her Daddy would call, a smooth talking Negro straight out of a Tyler Perry movie. Penny had never seen him wear anything but camo pants and shirts. He wasn't a good student but, much like Bishop, he always knew the right time to say the right things.

They hadn't done much, really. They ate lunch together. They kissed one time in the library, when Penny was tutoring him. They had made out one time under the bleachers behind the school.

He wanted to feel her up and that was mostly okay. Then he wanted to do more and that wasn't okay at all. She had to slap him to get him to stop. He played it off with a laugh. It was cool. No big deal. He got a little too fresh. That was all. They could still be together.

Not even a week later, Lamar was absent from school. No word from his parents about him being sick or injured—nothing.

After school, Penny went over to his house with her bike, looked through the living room window…and saw him slipping it to Ruthie Perkins. Penny didn't have any classes with her. She was some popular, catty, Alpha Bitch 15-year-old.

Penny ran home. She cried for days. She cried and cried.

And that same night, Penny just couldn't sleep. She tossed and turned and cried. It was well past 4:00 by the time she finally did. And the next day, she moved around like a zombie. Everybody had felt bad for her. Even LaCienega. She didn't apologize for anything but quit being a bitch for all of three weeks.

It had felt like the worst moment of her life.

It wasn't a damn bit of nothing compared to this.

[4]

2:38 am.

Penny hadn't done her homework tonight. Couldn't focus on it for any length of time. She could try doing it now but knew damn well it wasn't going to work out.

She got up anyway and went to the writing desk. The notebook with her math homework was still open. Math sucked hard but the assignment was the shortest. There was homework from history, English, and Social Studies as well and a lot of it. She had no illusions about getting it all finished tonight, when she was tired and so fucked-up in the head that she could barely see straight. But maybe she could get _something _done.

She stared at the math problems. They looked like ancient hieroglyphics.

After a half-hour of doing absolutely nothing, she realized there were tear-stains on the paper.

"Fucking bullshit!" she hissed as loudly as she dared. Before she knew what she was doing, the math assignment was torn to shreds all over the desk.

She stumbled back to the bed and fell down into it, clutching her head. She stared at her stomach. As she watched, it swelled up like a balloon. Phantom voices went into her ears—

_(Penny Proud is a Proud Slut!)_

_ (Your life is all about the baby now)_

_ (No young adult boy is going to want to date a single mother)_

_ (You should have thought about that before opening…)_

—and would not go away.

She was surrounded by nurses now. Her Mama was on the left. Her Daddy was on the right, scowling with his arms crossed. The room was gone, replaced by grayness. Sharp, glassy pains pierced her gut over and over again. There were no floors or walls. Just the mute faces of the masked nurses, her frowning father and that terrible shade of gray.

A kid.

She had a kid on the way.

What the hell was she going to do?

_You could get an abortion._

She sat up in the bed, looking around with wide, trapped eyes. The voice was so loud, so _solid_ that there was no way it had come from her own mind. Someone had to be in the bedroom with her.

Nobody was.

She could see clearly now. She was in her own bedroom and her stomach was flat again with her slight but noticeable abs.

An abortion.

Yeah, she _could _get one. She'd had a paper route as a kid. She also earned some money with the school paper. Plus the pitiful allowance that Daddy gave her. She saved it all up over the years, never spending it, not knowing why. In total, she probably had $400 just stashed away under her bed.

Today was Friday. The Planned Parenthood was open tomorrow until 3. The state they were in, San Joaquin, was one of the most liberal in the country. A 17-year-old could just walk right in and get the job done. They wouldn't even notify her parents. She'd have to make sure to go to the one the next city over, lower the chances of someone recognizing her.

She'd need a cover story too. She could tell her parents she went to Raven's Loft to try out this restaurant the kids had been talking about. She might need to bring Zoey along to seal the deal, not telling her the truth until they got there.

An abortion.

_It's murder, _Daddy said, _It's murder and you damn well know it._

She rolled around restlessly on the bed.

_ No. No, it's not. _

That was Zoey. With her liberal, hippy parents that almost never grounded her (to be fair, she never gave them a reason to).

_It's been three weeks at the most, Penny. It's the first trimester. It doesn't even have arms or legs. It doesn't have a brain or a stomach or an asshole to shit out of._

Penny chuckled miserably.

_ Even if that's true, it doesn't change the fact that if you leave it alone and let it be, it will eventually _become _a baby! It's murder._

_ It won't feel a thing._

_ Give the baby a chance!_

"Stop." Penny whispered, her voice dry and cracking.

_ What about your chances, Penny? How are you going to graduate with a baby? How are you going to work and go to college?_ _How are you going to find a man as a single mom? What about _your _life? It won't even have a real father. What about that? It will grow up knowing that Bishop never _ever _gave a shit about you or it!_

Penny moaned. She was exhausted.

_ It's murder. It's a sin._

_ That's easy for men like your Daddy to say. Men don't have to walk around with their guts swelling out like they sucked in helium, getting dirty looks from the people that walk past them. Men don't have to worry about their legs aching, or their ankles aching. They don't have to worry about puking their guts out every week. They don't have to worry about labor pains so bad they wonder if they're being eaten alive by what's inside them! Men love to judge us women for what we do—what makes _us _healthy—and judge and judge. Meanwhile they're cracking jokes in the locker room about all the bitches they've ran through and how bad condoms feel._

_ Is that what you're going to tell God when you're standing before Him?_

"No."

_Then what? _

Penny whispered: "Next time, put the Tree where people can't _fucking_ reach it."

[5]

9:03 am

And next morning, in the Planned Parenthood lobby room, she felt the same.

Zoey hadn't been able to tag along. Penny was all alone.

_Tell someone. _The voice of her mother now.

_Tell someone first._

"No." she said tonelessly.

_Then tell someone after._

"No."

In front of her, the clerk at the front desk looked up from her computer, concerned and confused. "Pardon me?" the clerk asked.

Penny put her brown hoodie over her head and stared at the floor.

She thought: _I'll have another one. When the time is right. When I'm ready to be a mom. I'll give the kid whatever they want for Christmas. New Year's Eve even._

That made things easier.

[6]

10:13 am

Penny was driving home. She felt fine.

[7] June 1, 2013

11:53 am

Graduation at last. Penny sat in the auditorium with DiJonay, Sticky, Zoey and LaCienega sat together. La had broken up with Bishop. He got expelled after he was caught banging one of the teachers.

There was the typical, boring speech from the principal. All the kids went outside and threw their hats into the air and all that mess. Penny looked around, grinning, crying. There was a kid looking at her. It was finally over. They were going to going to go their separate ways. It sucked but that was the facts of life. Di was going to go to a beauty school down south. Zoey was going to go to USJ. Sticky was going to go to the barber school nearby the beauty school that Di was going to. LaCienega was going to go west, to the coast, and become a fashion designer.

Penny still wasn't quite sure. She wanted to go to WU but she was torn between being a nurse and being a paramedic.

But never mind that for now.

"College life, here we come!" Zoey shouted.

"College _parties, _here we go!" Di answered back.

Sticky planted a smooch on her, making her giggle. "Don't get too crazy with that, sweetheart."

"He called me Sweeheart!" Di exclaimed, glomping him to the ground. Penny laughed at that.

"Get your butt over here, Proud!" La said cheerfully, waving them all towards Frankie. "Group photo!"

LaCienega and Penny were able to patch things up a bit. She was still kind of a cunt at times but so much better than before. But the air between them was always somewhat tense, as if there was something LaCienega wanted to tell her.

They had Frankie take the picture. "Say _witch_ _hunter_."

"Witch hunter." they all said with grave expressions.

_Click!_

When the photo was done, Penny finally saw the boy, about 3-years old. He stood next to Frankie, probably his baby brother or something. He wore a brown hoodie and khaki shorts. He did not smile.

Her crew drifted away, probably to let Frankie talk to her. The two of them had been talking a lot lately. It was funny how things turned out. When she started playing football in middle school, Frankie was a pig-headed asshole, talking about how she couldn't do it because she was a girl. Now, it was like he was glued to her leg.

She didn't like the feeling. The feeling that she was being chased. That she was worth something. But Frankie was a good friend to talk to.

"You still going to Western?" he asked.

She grinned at him. "Why you keep asking me that? You gonna stalk me?"

"Probably not." he said and snorted laughter. She laughed too.

"You still moving to HB?"

"Yeah. I'm gonna try and join the Air Force. I think I got the grades for it. Straight A's since the 10th grade. I hope that's enough."

"I'm sure it is."

The boy from before was standing next to Frankie. He did not smile. He was a creep, just like his brother.

Might as well greet him. She stooped down to eye-level with him. "Hey, little man! What's your name?"

Frankie looked at her. "Penny?"

"I didn't know you had a little brother, Frankie."

"I…don't have a little brother. I'm the youngest."

"This munchkin right here." Penny pointed at him. "He's family, right?"

He tilted his head at her. "Are we playing a game, Proud? Are you scamming me?"

"Why you tripping, Frankie? I'm just talking about this kid right here."

Frankie wasn't smiling anymore. He took a half-step back, like she might be dangerous.

"Penny…" he said, "There's nobody there."

[8]

The boy followed her through the rest of the day. When her family ate dinner at Applebees, he sat at an empty table across the room. When she was at home, talking with LaCienega over the phone, he stood in her bedroom door.

Penny never saw him move. She would just turn around and he was there.

And he was there when she went to bed.

"Go away!" Penny hissed. "Piss off!"

He stood at the foot of the bed. He did not answer.

She knew _who_ he was.

"Leave me the hell alone! I already fucking said _I'm sorry!_"

No response.

Penny burst into tears, body shaking. "What do you _want_ from me? Huh? You want me to bleed? You want me to die?"

Nothing.

"You gonna follow me around for the rest of my life?"

The boy spoke at last. He didn't _sound _like a 3 year old. "Only if you let me."

Penny stopped crying. Her eyes grew wide and calm. She knew what she had to do.

She got up from the bed, walked to her parent's bedroom. All at once, her feet felt lighter, like she had pulled off shackles she had only been somewhat aware of.

Penny opened the door, turned on the lights.

Her mother was a light sleeper and woke up quick. "Penny? What's the matter?"

"Wake Daddy up."

"Huh?"

"Wake him up."

Oscar Proud was sawing logs like a lumberjack. Trudy nudged him awake.

"Huh? What?" he muttered, wiping his eyes.

It wasn't a good time for this. There would never be a _good_ time for this. But it _was _time.

"What's wrong, baby?" Mama asked.

She looked at them, only half-awake but eyes full of concern. Yes, they would be angry. But they could get her the help she knew she needed.

She closed the door behind her and sat on the foot of the bed.

"Mama. Daddy." Penny Proud said. "There's something I gotta tell you."


End file.
